Intel to Build Fleet of 100 Autonomous Test Vehicles

With the recent completion of the acquisition of collision avoidance system company Mobileye, Intel has announced its intention to start building a fleet of fully autonomous (level 4 SAE) vehicles for testing in the United States, Israel and Europe.

The first vehicles will be deployed later this year, and the fleet will eventually scale to more than 100 automobiles, according to Intel. Building these test vehicles will combine proprietary capabilities from Mobileye, including computer vision, sensing, fusion, mapping and driving policy along with Intel’s leading open compute platforms and expertise in data center and 5G communication technologies to deliver a complete “car-to-cloud” system, the company stated.

“Delivering 100 test cars very quickly will demonstrate how this hybrid system can be adapted to meet customer needs,” said Amnon Shashua, soon-to-be senior vice president of Intel Corporation and future CEO/CTO of Mobileye. “Neither company could do this alone. Given resident skill-sets within the two companies, a standalone fleet of test vehicles is possible almost immediately.”

“Our goal is to develop autonomous vehicle technology that can be deployed anywhere, which means we need to test and train the vehicles in varying locations,” Shashua said. “We want to enable automakers to deliver driverless cars faster while reducing costs – data we collect will save our customers significant costs.”